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Actually, with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard out Ubuntu feels even further away from becoming mainstream. I want to like Linux on the desktop but looking at it obj

Actually, with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard out Ubuntu feels even further away from becoming mainstream. I want to like Linux on the desktop but looking at it objectively Win 7 and Snow Leopard are better.

daleharvey 17y ago
I genuinely believe (ignoring vendor support) that ubuntu is by far the easiest to use operating system, ahead of windows and osx for the basic operations of installing and using new applications, I would rather use gnome over leapords window manager any day. but the polish has always been lacking
- tortilla 17y ago
  Since I installed Ubuntu on my mom's computer, she hasn't called me for really any support. The computer boots up faster and isn't slowed down by virus software.
svetlins 17y ago
i don't think Win7 is better. to me, it is a slight improvement over vista but still annoying and ugly. osx is the clear winner among UIs and ubuntu is nice enough for most people.
rsheridan6 17y ago
I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs, which are the same on every platform. It really doesn't make much of a difference to me what desktop OS I use as long as it's cheap and it works with my hardware. I use Ubuntu on an HTPC because it's free and it (usually) works. I can't imagine what MS or Apple could do to improve on free + works. To me Linux is a lot closer now than it was in the past because you can pop a Ubuntu CD into a computer and 9 times out of time it you have a working computer with sound and everything half an hour later. 7 years ago, when I first installed linux, that would have been more like 1 time out of 10.
- bd 17y ago
  Firefox experience in Ubuntu is inferior to Firefox experience in Vista (at least on my Thinkpad). It's noticeably slower and fonts are uglier (even after installing exactly the same TrueType fonts as on Windows).
  - bad_user 17y ago
    For me the fonts are better in Linux. The clear-type technology they introduced in Vista doesn't play well with existing monitors. I have a 19 inch LCD display that's very decent, but I purchased it before Vista's release. The fonts on Vista have a red hallow that are unbearable, and I'm not the only one with this problem (and trust me, I played with the clear-type settings, although they don't make that easy). On a big monitor with a typical DPI, clear-type just adds visual noise. In Gnome the standard font anti-aliasing that doesn't use clear-type is great.
- bretthoerner 17y ago
  > I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs Me too, and I have a Dell laptop in the mail that I'll be installing Ubuntu on and trying to use as my main machine. But you know what isn't the same in all of these programs between OS X and Linux? Font rendering. I can get Linux to "OK" but OS X is always refreshing in comparison.
  - mikeyur 17y ago
    Font rendering is a big one for me. For some reason Ubuntu always looks.. ugly. The color scheme, font rendering, icons, etc, etc. Are there no designers in the open source community willing to help out? Or do the project leads not give a crap about design?
    - mquander 17y ago
      I personally find the Ubuntu out-of-the-box font rendering with the DejaVu font family on my laptop LCD to be on par aesthetically with Windows and OS X font rendering, so consider at least that there is an element of taste involved. (Unless some bug is making your fonts exceptionally bad for some reason.) Unfortunately, I am personally unable to duplicate Ubuntu's pretty fonts on Gentoo, no matter how hard I configure X and fonts/local.conf.
grandalf 17y ago
you must have a fast machine... Try installing windows 7 or snow leopard on a computer with 2gb of ram and a 2 year old processor... then the eye candy won't really add to the experience.
- mikeyur 17y ago
  Windows 7 is running on my 1.6ghz Sempron w/ 1GB of ram. I turned off the major eye candy (aero) and it still looks great and runs fine. That PC is the 'family' computer - so basically all it's used for is Surfing, streaming music through iTunes and instant messaging. It used to run ubuntu but everyone complained about how ugly it is - and I wasn't going back to XP. At least with Win7 I'm in the clear anti-virus wise, no need for that.. yet.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    hmm... I guess some people don't like brown. I would be happy if ubuntu came with a non-brown theme that had the same overall quality as the default theme.
    - Kadin 17y ago
      I have always preferred Kubuntu to Ubuntu for desktop installs, and that's one big reason. (Also, I've always preferred Konqueror as a file browser to whatever Ubuntu uses by default with Gnome.) However, it's been a while since I've used it (I have 10.4 and XP machines for the most part), and I get the feeling that Gnome has benefited from Ubuntu far more than KDE has from Kubuntu, being sort of a bastard stepchild at best. KDE's Konqueror has features that I still find myself wishing for on my Mac on a daily basis. (E.g., the visual view-by-size thing and built-in sshfs are my top two.) I've not seen any compelling reason to upgrade my Macs from 10.4, so when they finally hit EOL I may seriously reevaluate Kubuntu as my main desktop, see if it's kept up reasonably well versus the mainline Gnome version.
actf 17y ago
I couldn't agree more. The last time I ran Ubuntu as my primary OS its desktop experience was a long ways from Windows or OSX. Compviz was full of bugs that in my opinion significantly detracted from the the overall desktop experience. I'd constantly run into problems where windows wouldn't be placed correctly on the screen or would have artifacts drawn in them. Some of the compviz effects would fail to run altogether - with almost no indication of why. On top of that I found the general desktop performance to be much slower than Windows and OSX. Specific examples of this would include: hiding/restoring/maximizing windows, scrolling through text and graphics, and moving windows. Add to that performance issues in firefox (which have been well documented), incomplete drivers (sleeping, graphics drivers, etc), and the obvious compatibility problems with running linux. Ubuntu is still more frustration than it's worth for a desktop OS imho.
- weavejester 17y ago
  Funny, Ubuntu always seemed much more responsive to me. I very much prefer it over Windows. OSX I haven't tried enough to form an unbiased opinion on.
rbanffy 17y ago
please, define "better". I am sure Windows runs Office, Visual Studio and Internet Explorer much better than Ubuntu, but that's not always a plus. Neither is running Xcode.
davidw 17y ago
With disruptive innovations, the bar is not 'better' but 'good enough'. And Ubuntu is already there or close for many, many people.

daleharvey 17y ago

I genuinely believe (ignoring vendor support) that ubuntu is by far the easiest to use operating system, ahead of windows and osx for the basic operations of installing and using new applications, I would rather use gnome over leapords window manager any day. but the polish has always been lacking

tortilla 17y ago
Since I installed Ubuntu on my mom's computer, she hasn't called me for really any support. The computer boots up faster and isn't slowed down by virus software.

svetlins 17y ago

i don't think Win7 is better. to me, it is a slight improvement over vista but still annoying and ugly. osx is the clear winner among UIs and ubuntu is nice enough for most people.

rsheridan6 17y ago

I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs, which are the same on every platform. It really doesn't make much of a difference to me what desktop OS I use as long as it's cheap and it works with my hardware. I use Ubuntu on an HTPC because it's free and it (usually) works. I can't imagine what MS or Apple could do to improve on free + works. To me Linux is a lot closer now than it was in the past because you can pop a Ubuntu CD into a computer and 9 times out of time it you have a working computer with sound and everything half an hour later. 7 years ago, when I first installed linux, that would have been more like 1 time out of 10.

bd 17y ago
Firefox experience in Ubuntu is inferior to Firefox experience in Vista (at least on my Thinkpad). It's noticeably slower and fonts are uglier (even after installing exactly the same TrueType fonts as on Windows).
- bad_user 17y ago
  For me the fonts are better in Linux. The clear-type technology they introduced in Vista doesn't play well with existing monitors. I have a 19 inch LCD display that's very decent, but I purchased it before Vista's release. The fonts on Vista have a red hallow that are unbearable, and I'm not the only one with this problem (and trust me, I played with the clear-type settings, although they don't make that easy). On a big monitor with a typical DPI, clear-type just adds visual noise. In Gnome the standard font anti-aliasing that doesn't use clear-type is great.
bretthoerner 17y ago
> I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs Me too, and I have a Dell laptop in the mail that I'll be installing Ubuntu on and trying to use as my main machine. But you know what isn't the same in all of these programs between OS X and Linux? Font rendering. I can get Linux to "OK" but OS X is always refreshing in comparison.
- mikeyur 17y ago
  Font rendering is a big one for me. For some reason Ubuntu always looks.. ugly. The color scheme, font rendering, icons, etc, etc. Are there no designers in the open source community willing to help out? Or do the project leads not give a crap about design?
  - mquander 17y ago
    I personally find the Ubuntu out-of-the-box font rendering with the DejaVu font family on my laptop LCD to be on par aesthetically with Windows and OS X font rendering, so consider at least that there is an element of taste involved. (Unless some bug is making your fonts exceptionally bad for some reason.) Unfortunately, I am personally unable to duplicate Ubuntu's pretty fonts on Gentoo, no matter how hard I configure X and fonts/local.conf.

grandalf 17y ago

you must have a fast machine... Try installing windows 7 or snow leopard on a computer with 2gb of ram and a 2 year old processor... then the eye candy won't really add to the experience.

mikeyur 17y ago
Windows 7 is running on my 1.6ghz Sempron w/ 1GB of ram. I turned off the major eye candy (aero) and it still looks great and runs fine. That PC is the 'family' computer - so basically all it's used for is Surfing, streaming music through iTunes and instant messaging. It used to run ubuntu but everyone complained about how ugly it is - and I wasn't going back to XP. At least with Win7 I'm in the clear anti-virus wise, no need for that.. yet.
- grandalf 17y ago
  hmm... I guess some people don't like brown. I would be happy if ubuntu came with a non-brown theme that had the same overall quality as the default theme.
  - Kadin 17y ago
    I have always preferred Kubuntu to Ubuntu for desktop installs, and that's one big reason. (Also, I've always preferred Konqueror as a file browser to whatever Ubuntu uses by default with Gnome.) However, it's been a while since I've used it (I have 10.4 and XP machines for the most part), and I get the feeling that Gnome has benefited from Ubuntu far more than KDE has from Kubuntu, being sort of a bastard stepchild at best. KDE's Konqueror has features that I still find myself wishing for on my Mac on a daily basis. (E.g., the visual view-by-size thing and built-in sshfs are my top two.) I've not seen any compelling reason to upgrade my Macs from 10.4, so when they finally hit EOL I may seriously reevaluate Kubuntu as my main desktop, see if it's kept up reasonably well versus the mainline Gnome version.

actf 17y ago

I couldn't agree more. The last time I ran Ubuntu as my primary OS its desktop experience was a long ways from Windows or OSX. Compviz was full of bugs that in my opinion significantly detracted from the the overall desktop experience. I'd constantly run into problems where windows wouldn't be placed correctly on the screen or would have artifacts drawn in them. Some of the compviz effects would fail to run altogether - with almost no indication of why. On top of that I found the general desktop performance to be much slower than Windows and OSX. Specific examples of this would include: hiding/restoring/maximizing windows, scrolling through text and graphics, and moving windows. Add to that performance issues in firefox (which have been well documented), incomplete drivers (sleeping, graphics drivers, etc), and the obvious compatibility problems with running linux. Ubuntu is still more frustration than it's worth for a desktop OS imho.

weavejester 17y ago
Funny, Ubuntu always seemed much more responsive to me. I very much prefer it over Windows. OSX I haven't tried enough to form an unbiased opinion on.

rbanffy 17y ago

please, define "better". I am sure Windows runs Office, Visual Studio and Internet Explorer much better than Ubuntu, but that's not always a plus. Neither is running Xcode.

davidw 17y ago

With disruptive innovations, the bar is not 'better' but 'good enough'. And Ubuntu is already there or close for many, many people.